


Beasts In Repose

by Go0se



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Bandom Big Bang 2016, Black Parade Era, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Mental Health Issues, Paramour Mansion, Were-cats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-14
Updated: 2016-09-14
Packaged: 2018-08-15 00:44:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8035630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Go0se/pseuds/Go0se
Summary: They'd all heard the mansion was haunted, but the curse came as a surprise.





	Beasts In Repose

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Welcome to the Black (Cat) Parade [art]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8029114) by [turlough](https://archiveofourown.org/users/turlough/pseuds/turlough). 



> Written for Bandom Big Bang 2016! Huge thank you to [Turlough](http://archiveofourown.org/users/turlough) for making such [beautiful woolen Black Parade!MCR cats](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8029114), which allowed me to make this complementary fic.  
> Additional thanks to my friends who listened to me ramble about haunted mansions and transformative allergies and feline puns until I figured everything out. No thanks to my computer or Windows that decided to crash and update for three hours on the day when I needed to post. Thanks to cats, just in general.  
> And thank you to you, for reading this.
> 
> ~-~

Getting into recording again was a relief for Gerard. The last year and a half had been fucking wild and he didn’t want to have to think anymore. That in itself was part of the problem, of course; he shouldn’t be treating making another album as a way of avoiding his personal issues. Hell if he wasn’t going to do it anyway, though. Being sober was difficult, scary work, and repairing the seemingly infinite amount of damage he’d done to his relationships with his loved ones wasn’t any easier. It would be nice to focus on regular work for a while.

 

It would be nice to focus, period. He’d had the idea for the album building in his brain since Warped, growing larger and larger, like a shadow as the day stretched on into night. It was calling to him.

 

 

“Well that’s good, ‘cause you’ll be singing to it,” Frank said. He was kicking his feet against Bob’s seat, up front, presumably just to be an asshole. (This had little effect. Bob had his earphones in and was, more than napping, In The Nap Zone, and could not be moved.) He had his duffel bag in his lap and was leaning on it like a pillow. He smiled at Gerard from over his arm.

 

“Thanks, Frankie,” Gerard said. He wasn’t sure if he was being sarcastic or not; he was a bit too keyed up to tell. Frank laughed softly anyway, so it probably sounded like the first no matter how Gerard meant it.

 

“Did we really have to go with something up in the mountains?” Ray complained from up front. The complaining was forgiveable, since he was the one with the iron grip on the steering wheel of the rental van, and also the task of not killing them all. “We could’ve just gotten taxis, man.”

 

“This is more scenic,” Mikey said from where he was pressed up against the window, watching the mountains and trees go by.

 

It was true. The whole place was scenic as hell, and frankly spooky, even though they were only a few minutes of driving away from a regular-ass congested street in the living areas of Los Angeles. That was part of why Gerard had liked it so much. “Exactly,” he replied to Mikey, beaming at his brother’s shoulders. That was another reason he’d wanted them to all arrive there together: it was nice to be in a van again. Nostalgic.

 

Mikey turned around to shoot a half-smile back at him, nudging his glasses back into place where they’d been pressed way into the bridge of his nose by the window.

 

Gerard was excited. The drive up was beautiful—Ray’s potential driving-related arthritis aside—and he had a good feeling about this whole album. Or, not ‘good’, maybe. But deep.

 

 

 

Despite Ray's frequent oaths and death wishes on everyone's families, they made it up to the mansion in one piece. As they piled out of the car Gerard took a moment to just appreciate the house itself. It was genuinely an amazing place. The part of him that had paid attention to his art history classes back in college cooed at the angles of the roof and the different choices of wood, the uniformity of the windows.

 

The horror geek in him noticed how they looked like accusing eyes. He'd be lying if he said that that wasn't just as exciting.

 

"It's a trip, huh," Frank said, having drifted back around to Gerard when he'd noticed that he'd lagged behind the rest of them. He stared up at the mansion too, then shook his head. "You sure know how to pick them."

 

"You don't like it?" Gerard turned to his friend with a worried frown.

 

Frank waved him off. "Didn't say that. Get inside, Stoker."

 

 

 

In the house everyone was milling around the entrance hall room with their luggage on the floor. Except for the surroundings--the atmospherically creepy walls, elegant staircases, and flooring straight from the Overlook hotel--they looked the same as they'd all been at the departure gate in a million airports over the last tour. They were staying here to live, though, not leave. Gerard adjusted his backpack. "You didn't have to wait up," he said, surprised.

 

"We were picking rooms, dude," Ray replied, stretching his arms in front of him after being so tense while driving the car. "We didn't want to leave you out of it."

 

"Well, I did," Frank commented from beside Gerard, "But they said no, so." He grinned.

 

"Oh." That made more sense for several reasons. Gerard smiled at everyone and picked up his suitcase with his other hand. "I'm pretty sure the bedrooms are up the right-side one."

 

 

 

After they all had picked rooms Ray suggested they take a walk around and see the grounds of the place together. They'd already decided that they wouldn't start the actual work until tomorrow, just to give themselves a chance to settle in a little bit. Some of their gear still wasn't delivered, anyway, so it wouldn't've had much of a point.

 

The mansion continued to be eery and beautiful as they walked across it together, avoiding the small animals in the tall grass as well as any bits of trash or broken twigs that might've gotten caught in it. "I'd've thought they'd pay someone to cut this," Bob said.

 

Frank jostled into his shoulder. "Eh, adds to the charm."

 

There were trees of several kinds, including pine trees with brittle needles and oaks that were probably older than the house, lining the property. There was a fence too, the wrought-iron kind that Victorian orphanages had in horror movies, and what looked like a very thin back road leading from the back lot of the mansion into the hills and city beyond. The gate itself was rusted almost completely unmovable. Frank tried shaking it, to no avail except possibly getting tetanus. "Charm," Gerard said, and Frank rolled his eyes.

 

Regardless of the state of the grass and the back entrance, the pool behind the mansion had been cleaned out relatively recently. The water was clear, and it didn't appear to have a shallow end. Ray stayed a couple paces back from the edge while the others went up to look into it. Mikey lingered behind, too. "I think that's like, actual marble at the bottom," Gerard said. "Look at all the veins."

 

"It's pretty cool," Mikey said, but he still stayed behind.

 

Gerard would've too, really--he was no great swimmer--but the whole thing was pulling him in. The house and the grounds and now the pool. Their reflections looked spooky as hell, and he smiled.

 

 

 

Later, he'd understand that he was only getting caught up in his own ideas again, and he'd feel guilt for even that first day, for not listening properly.

 

 

 

"Did anyone else notice that there aren't any birds out here?" Ray asked as they all circled back around to the front of the house, to go inside. They’d been walking for about an hour and everyone was tired. It was still early in the evening, but the moon was out in the sky anyway, a pale shadow of itself.

 

"Aw man, missing animals? That is never a good sign," Frank said. "Wait, wait, I think I hear something-- oooh-wooh!" Frank turned to Ray, wiggling his fingers dramatically. "Boo!"

 

"Asshole," Ray replied, laughing.

 

Gerard turned around to see them both, and he laughed too as they got back to the front door of the place. He held it open for everyone as they trooped in.

 

 

 

"I noticed that too, Ray," Mikey said. "Like, there weren't squirrels or anything."

 

"They're probably just sleeping early or something," Gerard said as he stepped inside and closed the door behind him. "Preparing for winter."

 

"It's like seventy degrees, Gee."

 

Gerard waved his hand. "Early winter. You don't know how rodent brains might work, alright?"

 

"And you do?" Mikey shot back.

 

Frank laughed delightedly. "He's squirrelly enough as it is. He probably like, communes with them while we're asleep."

 

"Speaking of sleeping," Bob said loudly. He had a grin on his face and was lighting a smoke while sitting on the bottom step of the huge staircase. "Do we want to set a schedule?"

 

Gerard paused, rubbing his hair. "Maybe twelve to seven, tomorrow?" He said. "And then we'll break for dinner. A nice late start, we can ease into it a little."

 

"It'll give time for the deliveries to get here, too," Frank said, nodding, while Bob nodded too. He joined Bob on the stair and took out his own packet of cigarettes. "Sounds good to me."

 

"I'm down for that," Mikey agreed, at the same time as Ray said, "Yeah, that'd work out."

 

"Noon it is, then." Gerard put his hands in his pockets, trying not to stare at Bob and Frank's cigarettes. He'd forgotten his own in his room upstairs. He knew that they'd lend him one if he asked, but Frank would make fun of him about it, and Bob would have to lend him a lighter too.

 

"Gee," Mikey said. When Gerard turned he handed him a smoke.

 

"Thank you," Gerard said, and then again when Bob wordlessly passed him his lighter. He inhaled gratefully. It was still amazing here, but some of the nerves were starting to set in.

 

"Ray, want one?" Mikey asked, turning to Ray, but the other man shook his head.

 

"We didn't bring any food out, did we?" Ray asked, and then laughed out loud into the dismayed silence that fell. "Jokes on you, I brought delivery pizza in my boxes."

 

"I thought those were guitars," Bob said.

 

"Some were pizza. Anyway, supper's in the kitchen in the next five minutes if you're gonna have some. Hurry or I'll eat it all myself."

 

 

 

The first night in a new place was always weird, for Gerard, although you'd think he would've gotten used to it all by now. He laid awake in his room, the unfamiliar blankets pulled up to his chest. At first he'd left the door to the hall open, but then he'd shut it out of force of habit. And monster-fear, if he was honest with himself. The beautiful eeriness of the Paramour turned out to not dissipate at all at night.

 

He'd left the door that led to the attached bathroom open a crack, though. He shared it with Mikey, who's room was attached on the other side, and it was comforting to think that his brother was only one obstacle away from him.

 

He fell asleep eventually. The sound of the house settling seemed to carry through to his dreams: he was alone on a wooden ship in the ocean, but nothing but saltwater for miles on either side, and a sliver of a moon overhead. The boat creaked and cried out under his feet.

Some of the noises sounded like Mikey's voice. It was alarming enough that he woke up halfway through the night, still half on the boat but aware of the comforter he'd twined around himself like a boa constrictor, and he listened with worry for signs that Mikey was hurt. But there was nothing, and eventually he fell asleep all the way again.

 

 

*

 

"Cell phone service is really fucking shit up in the mountains, huh?" is the first thing that Gerard hears the next morning.

 

He blinked a bit stupidly at Frankie, who was sitting at the fancily-but-rough-hewn wooden table and grimacing at his phone. "I was trying to call J," Frank explained, glancing up, "Just wanted to tell her we got here alright. That was, uh, about twenty minutes ago." He shook the phone in his hand, like that might help, and then set it down with distaste. "Fucking technology."

 

"... right," Gerard said, and then made a beeline for the coffee maker.

 

“Oh sorry, dude," Frank said behind him and sounding very far away. “I forgot you hadn’t caffeinated.”

 

Gerard was focused on locating the can of coffee beans that he'd brought from his mom's house in Jersey. It turned out to be in stashed in the upper cupboard; Ray or Frank must've been re-organizing them. He took off the lid gratefully, inhaled the delicious caffeine smell, and then went ahead and filled up the carafe.

 

Frank was suddenly at his elbow, tapping on his arm. "Watch out with that, man," he said. "I was drinking some this morning and the taste is all off. It has extra iron deposits, or something."

 

Gerard paused, then shrugged. "I'll make it extra-strong," he said, "That'll cover anything."

 

"As long as you put a label on that shit. Your extra-strong is going to kill us all."

 

Gerard shrugged again, declining to answer that particular line of reasoning. It wasn't his problem if none of his band had the capillary-fortitude to withstand how strongly he brewed his caffeine. Except for Mikey, who'd been drinking with Gerard since Mom had let them try some of her morning brew. Mikey and him could have a coffee-drinking contest if either of them had an active deathwish at the same time one day.

 

He paused for a second, remembering his dream, and then turned to Frank with a small frown. "Have you seen Mikey yet?"

 

"It's only ten, he's probably still passed out."

 

"Right, right." Gerard opened the cupboard again and contemplated the assortment of cups and mugs, selected one, then poured himself some motivation and sat down beside Frank to drink it.

 

Frank took a bite out of his toast and jam. "So I was thinking about that riff that Ray and I were telling you about the other day," he said, half of the syllables muffled by the bread in his mouth and crumbs getting everywhere.

 

 

 

About twenty minutes later they were still in the kitchen, discussing the demos. Ray and Bob had joined them, Bob bringing a sheet of paper and some half-chewed pens ("That's gross, man," Frank had said, and Bob tossed one at him). They were passing the sheet back and forth to scribble down ideas. Gerard was still pushing to call the thing, "The Five Of Us Are Dying", if only because it made the theme he'd had in mind for the music videos easier to grasp. "No, not a actual band, we’re the band. Like a parade," he said.

 

Ray said skeptically, "I don't know, man. Weren't we talking about how we wanted to be less all about the blood this time?"

 

"This is different," Gerard argued.

 

There was a thump in the doorway and everyone looked up. Mikey was standing there rubbing his eyes. At first Gerard thought he might've walked into the doorframe, but then he put his hand down and it was obvious that he'd in fact just not seen the thing. His eyes were bloodshot as hell. He must've not slept at all the whole night.

 

"Shit, dude. Did the spooks get to you?" Frank asked, either intentionally sympathetic or fake-sympathetic; sometimes it was hard to tell with him.

 

"Fucking maybe, my room was freezing," Mikey said, and then yawned for like ten seconds. "Sorry. Is there coffee?"

 

"I made it extra strong," Gerard said.

 

"Awesome." Mikey lumbered over to the coffee-maker and blinked down at it, fixing his glasses with one hand.

 

"How did everyone else sleep, anyway?" Ray asked around the table, now that the topic had been brought up. "Everyone still good for starting on it today?"

 

"I'm fine to play," Bob said, "But didn't really sleep well. The damn faucet kept dripping in my room. It kept me awake for like an hour."

 

" _Ooooh-woooh_ ," Frank whispered from the other side of the table. Bob threw another pen cap at him.

 

"I had a dream about the ocean," Gerard offered. "It was beautiful but also kind of creepy as fuck."

 

"Yeah?" Mikey had turned around to lean on the counter, holding the second-biggest mug in the cupboards up to his mouth.

 

"Yeah. I was on this massive boat, and there was nobody out at all, and I couldn't see any land. Just me and the moon."

 

"Meet any beautiful mermaids?" Frank asked.

 

"Sadly, no."

 

"Damn shame." Frank traced a pattern in the breadcrumbs on his plate, then looked up at Ray. "I slept fine. Only got kind of bummed out this morning when I came down here and my fucking phone wouldn't work."

 

“It’s not just yours,” Mikey said. He was cradling the mug to his chest now. “It’s the house, all kinds of signal’s are just shit up here. I was trying all night.”

 

So he really hadn't slept. Gerard winced. "Sucks, man."

 

Mikey shrugged.

 

"Think you can still play?" Ray said, not un-sympathetically. "We can wait a couple hours if you want to try and nap or anything."

 

Mikey shook his head, holding up his coffee. "I'm good," he said. "I can rock out. It's not like I haven't done it on little sleep before."

 

That was true, but it still affected the Older Brother Sensors in Gerard's brain. There was a brief conflict before they were over-written by the Rational Adult portion of his head, which told him that of course Mikey could work while he was tired, they'd all learned to, and one night with a little disrupted sleep didn't necessarily mean a deeper problem.

 

"Okay," Ray said, his curls bobbing while he nodded. He swiped the page on the table over to him from Frank, who'd been doodling pictures of ghosts, and took a pen from the pile beside Bob. He made a clear label of "Day One", underlined it, and then wrote in, "Noon: Jam Time".

 

"Maybe we should have someone who isn't always late writing the actual schedule," Frank said.

 

"Brian's going to come in sometime this afternoon," Gerard offered, "To check in on us and stuff, we can ask him."

 

"Fuck you," Ray said companionably, and everyone laughed.

 

 

 

Since it was only the second day they’d all decided to hold practice in one of the mansion’s drawing rooms, instead of the actual recording studio in the east wing. Gerard had no idea why it was called a drawing room except that he wanted to draw there. The detailing alone on the top of posts as they met the ceiling was incredible. He was pretty sure there was a gargoyle up in the north corner. The floor was bare wood except where it was covered by deep red rugs, and yellow wallpaper detailed with some kind of creeper vine crawled all over the room, forming mazes within mazes. Frank stared at the wallpaper for a minute as he got in the room, then just shrugged and worked on plugging in his guitars.

 

He'd been the one who'd let the delivery van guys in in the morning, went over the inventory and signed off on the papers and everything. They'd gotten their usual guitars, bass’, Bob’s drum kit, Gerard's beloved old-school mic stand which he'd be using in the music videos so help him God, a tambourine, and oddly a violin which no one actually knew how to play. If they needed more instruments they'd add them in production when they actually talked to their sound technicians and Rob, their producer. For now they had bones to lay.

 

 

 

They decided to start it low-key instead of throwing themselves into a mock performance with only half-finished songs. They pulled the loveseats and couch away from the fireplace (a fireplace made of marble, like the pool, which had some kind of lion carved into it) so they could sit comfortably close together and just jam for a little while. Bob took out his sticks and drummed on the side of the couch. The acoustics in the room were beautiful, which definitely helped.

 

Mikey was having a little trouble concentrating. No one talked about it, but Gerard was aware anyway. He could feel the worry that'd bloomed in the back of his head at breakfast start to grow, but he ignored it as much as he could.

 

 

 

"It's fucking freezing in here," Bob said as they came to the end of one of the more hashed-out songs. (Gerard was thinking of calling it, "I Don't Love You": simple and to the point.)

 

"Yeah! I thought that was just me!" Frank said, putting down his guitar. "We need some space heaters or something."

 

"I'm sure we can ask Brian to get those for us," Gerard said. "Or Stacy, maybe."

 

"Or we could just drive into town and pick some up ourselves," Ray said.

 

"Hey, if you want to drive down that death-mountain again, be my guest, man," Frank said. "I vote on 'call Brian and make him fetch us things'.”

 

Mikey started picking out a line which Gerard didn't get for a second, and then laughed at when it clicked. "Put our service to the test," he sang along, blatantly butchering a French accent.

 

Mikey raised his head when Gerard finished, looking amused. "Okay, you need to apologise to the entirety of France next time we're there for that."

 

Frank and Ray both broke out laughing, Bob smiling and shaking his head.

 

"Whatever. Look, I'm going to go use the landline to check if Brian's around or not." Gerard pulled himself up from the chair and clambered, imprecisely, out of the circle, listening to the agreeable babble of his band behind him as they continue talking about heaters and old pipes fucking up in houses and chord progressions. 

 

 

*

 

 

They’ve been at the Paramour for a month and it was starting to fall apart.

 

 

 

Literally, in Bob’s case. The faucets in his room’s attached bathroom had kept leaking despite them actually calling a plumbing company up to the house to look at it. Twice. Bob was having huge troubles sleeping with the noise, and he was hardly the only one. Mikey wasn’t talking to anybody, both Frank and Ray had started to become angry and almost cruelunder the stress of everyone else’s melancholy, and Gerard… Gerard walked through the house by himself, and as he did, it seemed like the walls and ceilings got taller. He knew they couldn’t physically be changing, but it does nothing to shake the feeling. They’d bought space heaters for the practice room, the actual studio in the east wing and for their individual bedrooms, but against all physics it seemed like the cold air in the house pushed itself in on them.

 

To just really even things out, he’d been getting a cold for the last two weeks—sneezing, always teary-eyed. The works. On the other side of all the shitty business, though, was the music. They'd made the move from the yellow drawing room into the recording studio proper about two weeks back and, so far, it was all coming along okay. The guys seemed to be pushing themselves into their instruments even more than usual; getting all of the weird frustration and fear out. Or, in Gerard's case there was fear. Maybe the others were faring better than him.

 

It was becoming a lot clearer how fucking haunted the place was. Along with Bob's water problem there were the doors that would fly open and then slam closed for no reason. Random shit would go missing and then turn up somewhere else, sometimes half-broken. Gerard's dreams had slowly segued from isolation to isolation: they'd started out being about water and went to showing him visions of flame and death of everyone he loved. Both times he was alone.

 

 

 

And then there was Mikey, who seemed the most haunted out of all of them. Gerard wished that they'd spent more time considering which rooms they would take, because Mikey's was... horrible. It had one singular lightbulb that made everyone's skin look dead, and it was always fucking freezing in there. Always. Gerard had offered to switch with him. It wouldn't've taken that long with their shared bathroom, and at least Mikey might be able to have a better time sleeping, but Mikey had refused. He'd drawn in on himself, barely talking to anybody outside practice, hardly eating anything.

 

Ray and Bob had found him outside on the lawn in his boxers a couple nights before. It'd been fucking freezing out at night. He'd woken up when they'd shook him--thank _God_ \-- and even though he'd sworn up and down he hadn't been drinking before he'd went outside, he'd still very obviously been disoriented and confused.

 

From what Ray told him, he looked like he'd been picking at his wrists again, too. "Scabs all over them," Ray had said to Gerard when they'd met at breakfast, and Mikey had still been asleep. Or, at least, still in his room. Ray had pressed on his temple like he had a migraine, and then said, "G, I know none of us like to think this, but maybe he's..."

 

Relapsing. Gerard had swallowed and nodded. "Maybe," he allowed. Then he'd gotten up and made another pot of coffee even though his hands were already kind of shaking. Ray had let the conversation drop for a while.

 

 

 

Now, though, Gerard couldn't forget it. He'd been sitting in his room and listening to some fucking music, just from his own library since the internet was patchy as shit up here, and then the playlist had ran out, so he was left laying in the morning sun and listening to the creaks and groans of the house settling around him. He thought of warning signs. Then, in a fit that was half anger and half desperateness, he kicked his way out of the blankets and crossed through the bathroom to Mikey's door.

 

He'd held the door open quietly, at first. It was still way early. Assuming Mikey had actually gotten to sleep last night, which all of them were doing less and less, he might still be in the room. "Mikey?"

 

But nothing answered. Gerard opened the door a little farther and went in.

 

He went through Mikey's duffel, then doubled back into the bathroom and went through his brother's side of the good oak cabinet too. He'd found toothpaste, deodorant, clean clothes, gross clothes; nothing out of the ordinary. Then he'd gone through Mikey's narrow bedside stand.

 

Bingo.

 

And when he said ‘bingo’, he meant “way too many prescription drugs for one person to have with a side of a palm-sized bottle of rye that was three quarters gone, and way too fucking many shitty implications between them". Fucking _rye_. The only time Mikey would drink rye was if there wasn’t any beer, rum or vodka left in the house, and even then he’d make a screwdriver with it with orange juice. He said it made him feel like his tongue was burning out.

 

 

 

Gerard swallowed while he stared at the bottle. His eyes were pricking and his throat felt suddenly, unreasonably dry, and he was really fucking aware of both.

 

"Goddamnit, Mikey," he whispered into the room.

 

 

 

 

 

"Marow?"

 

Gerard yelped and nearly dropped the bottle, cursing when it hit his knee and rolled off. It didn't break, thank God. The last thing he needed was to walk down to the cobwebby laundry room with the flickering lights tonight, and the second-last thing he needed was to show up to practice with one of his only pairs of jeans smelling like booze. He lurched to his feet and spun around.

 

He didn't see anything at first, of course, because he didn't look down. When he did he froze; but this time not out of fear.

 

 

 

There was a cat under the dresser. Gerard hadn't noticed it before, but then, he hadn't been looking. It seemed like the kind of cat that could easily go unnoticed anyway, just a scrawny thing with soot-coloured fur and some darker markings on its face. Its front paws were a mess, like it’d been gnawing on them. It was hunkering under the dresser so much that it was almost pressed to the floor, staring up at Gerard's with eyes the size of the moon.

 

For a split second Gerard felt extreme guilt. Then he sneezed. "Augh."

 

The cat didn't flinch at the noise, but it did retreat farther under the dresser without making another sound.

 

Now Gerard felt actual guilt. "Hey, no," he said to it. "It's-- I won't hurt you. Come here." He clicked his fingers together a couple times, like he'd seen his cousins do with their cats (before he left to get fresh air at family reunions).

 

A cat in Mikey's room answered one question-- why had Gerard been so sick for so long, lately-- but brought up a whole litter of others. Namely, what the fuck. Was his brother drinking on pills as well as harbouring strays, now? Had someone left a window open somewhere and the cat had just crawled in to get out of the weather?

 

"You're out of luck, man," Gerard said to the dresser. The cat had retreated completely into the shadows underneath it. Gerard got onto his belly on the floor, then sneezed three times in a row. "Ow. It's not that much warmer inside and outside, though. Way colder actually." He paused. "If you need water you can go to Bob's room, he's been having a problem with that lately."

 

The cat meowed again, a single, quavering note. Gerard felt his heart break a little. "Listen," Gerard said, and then he paused.

 

He was arguing with a cat. More to the point he was arguing with a cat in a darkened room, in fuck-all hour of the morning, while laying on the floor, and he hadn't even drank any coffee yet. He was not in his best state. There was absolutely nothing this would accomplish.

 

 

 

Gerard shook his head and then stood up, groaning in pain as some of his back popped back into place. _Getting fucking old_ , a voice in his head hissed. Gerard ignored it as best as he could.

 

Whatever the fuck was going on in this room, the cat would eventually need food. Gerard would go downstairs and get some caffeine, and then he'd see if they had any hot dogs leftover or something. Once Mikey surfaced Gerard would ask his brother what the fuck he was playing at with the fucking booze and pills and apparent cat-napping. Maybe in more delicate terms, though.

 

First, coffee.

 

Gerard took one more look at the dresser which housed the cat underneath it and then pressed on his temple, putting it out of his mind for now. Before he went down into the kitchen he carefully made sure that Mikey's window, and the doors to the bathroom and hallway, were securely closed. Maybe if he could quarantine the cat for a little while, it would help contain the rest of the crazy.

 

He left the rye where it’d rolled under the bed. There was no way he was bringing it to his room, and lugging it downstairs would only invite Frank and Bob and Ray’s suspicions. He couldn’t flush it, either. Mikey should be the one to throw it away.

 

 

 

 

 

Frankie was the only person in the kitchen area when Gerard went down. He raised one hand in greeting without even really looking up. He hadn't been speaking much, latey. At that moment he was busy scribbling notes on a well-scribbled piece of paper. A steaming cup of coffee sat at his elbow, along with a bottle of acetaminophen since Advil was hell on his stomach.

 

Ray and Frank had always been hard workers. They'd never competed, exactly, but Ray had high standards and Frank had outlandish ideas and sometimes the two clashed. The past month had only upped that into overdrive. The past week, in Gerard's opinion, had been the first time that the clashes between the two guitarists had become genuinely aggressive, if only in practice space. Gerard felt a soreness and sadness in his chest, looking at Frank.

 

It was the stress. It was affecting all of them.

 

But the music they'd made since they got to the mansion was some of the most ambitious, vivid songs he could remember hearing, let along singing, ever. Gerard wasn't going to let everyone down by pulling them out now.

 

Frank paused in his frenetic writing to look at up at him and raise his eyebrows. "Y'alright?"

 

"Yeah," Gerard replied. He scratched the back of his neck and padded his now well-worn trail to the counter. The mug, the weird-tasting water, the carafe, the double scoop. Keeping his caffeine intake so high was most likely not doing anything at all for his stress levels, but the only other alternative that Gerard had was sleeping. He'd put that off for as long as he could.

 

With his full and sweetened cup in hand, he sat down next to Frank, taking a long drink before even attempting to talk. "Did you get to sleep last night?"

 

"Not much," Frank said. He'd started to write down notes again, but he tapped the pencil twice on the paper. "Tried to call Jamia, again, but it wouldn't connect from up here."

 

Gerard winced. He'd been trying not to think of girlfriends, lately, because it just reminded him of his, who he hadn't been talking to since he'd got here. He definitely wasn't going to think about if that was a relief for him or not. "I'm sorry, man."

 

Frank shrugged. "Not your fault the cell phone is shit."

 

It was Gerard's fault. He'd been the one to order them all up here. He drank some more.

 

 

 

Outside, a wind was kicking old grass clippings and new pieces of lightweight trash around in front of the kitchen windows. The house creaked and settled around them.

 

"Have you seen Mikey today?"

 

Gerard finished his sip and then looked over at his friend, frowning. "It's like ten in the morning?"

 

"I know, but I was looking for him yesterday," Frank said, "I wanted to run something over with him on the end of the fifth song. I couldn't find him anywhere." He turned in his seat to peer at Gerard. "Did you see him? Was he sleeping?"

 

Gerard made sure to keep his breathing even and slow. If he started panicking now he'd never be calm again. "No," he said, "He was at practice when I saw him last." Mikey had played poorly the day before, snapped at anyone (mainly Ray) who'd pointed out ways he could do better, and when they told him they were starting to worry about him he'd cussed them out and left the room.

 

"Hm," Frank grunted in response. He was focusing on his coffee too.

 

 

 

 

 

After he'd finished his coffee Gerard left Frank alone to his notes. He went back upstairs to re-check his brothers room and found no one, not even the cat. The bottle of rye under the bed had remained exactly where it'd rolled, though. Gerard stared at it for longer than he'd like to tell anyone, then left, leaving the door open behind him.

 

There wasn't a cat in his room, either, although he sneezed enough he felt like his brain was trying to evacuate through his nose. He wouldn't blame it at this point.

 

 

 

He found Ray downstairs in the TV room. It was really another drawing room, with different terrible wallpaper and the same gargoyle ceiling as the yellow drawing room. Ray wasn't watching a show or movie, just sitting on the couch and quietly picking at some chords on his guitar. He looked up when Gerard walked in. "Hey, man," he greeted Gerard in the same time of voice he might've used on a upset fourteen year-old. (It was a voice that he'd honed pretty well over the years. They'd met many, many upset and overwhelmed fourteen year-olds.)

 

"Hey," Gerard said, "Look, have you seen Mikey?"

 

Ray paused at his strumming and frowned. "No, not since yesterday."

 

"Fuck," Gerard spat, then swore again because he could. He put his hands to the side of his head. "Do you know where Bob is?"

 

"Bob went outside." Ray put down his guitar on the couch beside him and stood up. "Checking out the pool or something. Think he just wants something to do. What's wrong?"

 

"I can't find him," Gerard blurted. "Mikey, he's gone. Frank hasn't seen him and he's not in his room, and I cant find him."

 

Ray closed his eyes for a second and tilted his head forwards. "Shit," he said, then looked back up. "Do you need help looking for him? Should I call somebody?"

 

 

 

"Call who?"

 

For the second time that morning, Gerard flinched and spun around. He managed to hold in the yelp this time.

 

Mikey stood in the doorway. He was wearing his regular jeans and gross socks and a large hoodie, something he'd stolen from Gerard since high school, and except for the bags under his eyes he looked exactly the same as he had for the last couple months. He scratched the side of his head and pushed his glasses back into place, blinking tiredly. "Or you can not answer me, I guess," he added.

 

He didn't seem drunk or stoned. Damn him, he seemed so fucking normal, and no one had seen him in at least twelve hours. "Where have you been?" Gerard demanded.

 

Mikey shrugged. "Around. Something up?"

 

"Arou-- nobody's seen you since last fucking night," Gerard said, stepping closer and then away from his brother, not sure if he wanted to hug him or punch him.

 

"I'm here," Mikey said, tucking his sweater-covered hands into the hoody's front pouch. "And I've been here. We're not practicing for a while, right?"

 

Gerard screwed up his voice to say that, "Soon, actually, maybe you can play well this time," and then he sneezed. And again. And a third time. "Shit."

 

"Bless you," Ray muttered from behind him.

 

"Thanks," Gerard said over the shoulder, and by the time he'd turned forwards again Mikey had disappeared. " _Fuck_."

 

 

*

 

 

It went on and on like that, practice after practice, everyone’s tempers getting shorter, Mikey spending more time who the fuck knew where. Gerard’s dreams got worse and worse, to the point where he woke up sometimes with the smell of fire clinging to the inside of his throat.

 

Everything came to a head about two weeks after Gerard had found the bottle in Mikey’s room.

  

Mikey had been late to practice and then had just missed the window of "late" completely. Bob had went out to find him. Gerard had paced along the studio's thin, warped wooden floors while Frank and Ray had tuned and re-tuned their guitars, and then Bob had came back alone. He'd shook his head.

 

"Whatever, we can practice without him," Gerard had said finally, annoyed with all of the sniping at each other.

 

 

 

And they had done it without Mikey, but having a band without having a bassist was like missing half of their heartbeats. Bob had sat in the back with his kit, hitting all the notes, but he just sounded wrong alone.

 

"Fuck it," Frank announced after one particularly bad take, and he threw his guitar down so hard on the floor that static blared from the in-booth microphone.

 

"Jesus!" Gerard cried, hands flying up to his ears. "Frank what the fuck?"

 

Ray and Bob had called out, too, both of them with pained and angry expressions.

 

"Just because you're not playing your best, don't take it out on us," Ray had said once the reverb had faded.

 

"I'm not playing my best?" Frank spat back, and they were off, sniping at each other like soldiers on opposite trenches. Bob got into it, too, putting down his drums and standing up, his scratchy deep voice mixing with Ray and Frank's voices until it sounded like they were in a washing machine.

 

Gerard had put down the micstand and stalked over, trying to get everyone to _listen_ to each other, trying to get some control of the situation, or at least that's what he would've sad. But then Frank only rounded him, and Ray followed, and Frank had tears in his eyes, and Ray had grabbed handfuls of his bangs and was holding them up off his forehead like only with no physical barriers at all to his sight could he actually comprehend how fucking assholeish Gerard and Frank and Bob were all being.

 

Gerard had said over everyone's voices, "Look, we're all under a lot of fucking stress right now, okay, but we shouldn't be doing this here."

 

 

 

And then--

 

 

 

It was like a bell. Like the feeling of hearing a bell, one of the heavy ones where the inside brass was as big as a human being and if someone held their hand on it they would feel an earthquake, especially when no bell is expected to ring. There wasn't a sound but a toll went through the room and all of them in one long, shuddering instant. It shook them apart.

 

Distantly, Gerard was aware of vertigo but not pain. He tried to speak or maybe even to yell, but there was blackness and stillness in his throat, blackness over his eyes, his ears, above him, underneath him.

 

 

 

*

 

 

He was underneath something.

 

Whatever it was, was soft, heavy and dark-coloured. He nudged it with his head and both sides of his whiskers pressed against the soft-and-heavy thing.

 

He hunched down closer to the ground (also dark, but solid underneath him) and then pushed forwards with his head again. This time a sliver of light opened on the ground in front of him, just a thin line, and he walked towards it as quickly as he could with his belly dragging and his paws unable to move very far.

 

 

 

He raised his head again and the soft-heavy slithered off of him, sliding from the end of his tail to the ground again. Whatever it was had belonged to a human; it stunk like human, and sweat, and something weirdly familiar in the back of his brain. His ears, now free, swiveled, trying to tell where he was. He sat up and craned back, trying to see the sky, sniffing at the air. The whole place stunk like human.

 

Then he paused. There were other cats here.

 

He dropped back to all four paws and carefully went into hunting posture, keeping low to the ground and slow enough not to startle some prey from the corner of its eye. He was in some kind of large room, and as he stalked across the floor he recognized something. He let the hunting posture drop.

 

From a nearby sharp slant of metal and wood there came another cat, limbs practically flying as he skittered to a stop right in front of where he was standing, tail on alert. The other cat was a tabby, small and grey with deeper gray stripes. Grey sniffed at him curiously, then turned around again and skittered off into the distance, towards where the others were.

 

 

 

Gerard made to go follow them, but a door squeaked open, and his ears pricked.

 

Standing in the doorway to the room, which he hadn’t even noticed before, was a tall human. They stared down at him, and the others. They walked closer and then stopped.

 

Looking up, he realized that this was not just _a_ human; this was one of his favourite humans. Pleased, he strode forwards and started twining around their legs, welcoming them to his strange huge room.

 

But something was wrong. His favourite human sat down and their scent became much more clear: something acrid, and something like cat but not entirely cat, and entirely too much sorrow.

 

Saltwater splashed down onto him and he flinched back, flattening his ears, but then pressed forwards again.

 

None of his favourite humans should feel so much sadness. He put his paws on their knee and rubbed their hand with his head. He asked them why they were spilling water.

 

“Meow,” his favourite human replied, which didn’t make any sense. Then they flinched, as the grey cat came careening towards them and—without warning—hopped onto his favourite human’s arm. Two others followed the grey cat: a large brown tabby, and an orange one with large ears and an annoyed tail (flicking side to side).

 

“Oh, god, all of you?” His favourite human said, and it still didn’t mean anything. He looked up, asking them what was wrong again.

 

“Okay. Uh. This’ll be awkward if you wake up here tomorrow,” his favourite human mumbled. Then they gently pushed him away, off of their knee.

 

He, of course, protested loudly, but they just kept going off. They were taking the grey cat with them, somewhere. They looked down, though, and their face and the strange things over their face no longer seemed to be leaking. “I’ll be back,” they promised. “I’m gonna take you guys to your rooms.”

 

He didn’t understand that, either. Him or his favourite humans would have to get better at communicating than this.

 

He sat beside the door that his favourite human locked behind them, tail twitching. The other two cats still in the room came up to him, sniffing, and he sniffed back, curious, but ultimately sat down again.

 

 

 

Eventually his favourite human did return, and carried him for a long time. When he was placed down it was dark. 

"I'll... you'll be alright, here," his favourite human said.

He looked up at them and asked them where they were going. 

They paused, and then gently pet his head and chin. "Goodnight," they said, pulling away.

  
A moment later door squeaked closed, and the room dimmed. He felt his eyes change.

 

There was a window, and the moon was wide outside it. He looked up at the moon, and, slowly, around the room at the ghosts.

He closed his eyes and put his head down on his paws.

 

 

 

*

  

 

“So that was fucked up,” Frank announced, flopping sideways onto Gerard’s bed like a dog.

 

Gerard moved his feet out of the way, wincing at the pops and creaks in his bones. Mercifully, the hissing voice in his head was silent. Apparently everyone in your band including you turning out to be some kinds of were-housecats was enough to stall an age-based existential crisis.

 

That morning he’d woken up naked and confused in his own bed, which wouldn’t’ve been unusual two years ago but hadn’t happened much since. The memories he did have of the night before were blurry, and colour-shifted, and he would’ve believed that he’d somehow messed up and dropped some hallucinogens accidentally, except the others had came up to his room to tell him that they remembered the exact same thing.

 

"Super fucked up," Ray agreed from his spot leaning against the wall beside Gerard’s dresser. He scratched his arm, and then his shoulder, and then back down to his elbow. His voice was light, but he hadn't bothered to wipe his curls out of his face when he'd woken up at that morning. Behind it, he was looking out at everyone with serious eyes.

 

Bob leaned forwards in the winged chair by the window. He also had a serious expression on, with his hands folded under his chin. "So," he said, and for a split second Gerard thought he was going to say 'Tell me about your mother”, even though that really wasn't funny and _really_ wasn't the time. But instead he continued, "What are we going to do?"

 

Everyone, Gerard included, turned to look at Mikey.

 

 

 

Mikey shrugged and picked at the outside of his wrist. He was sitting on Gerard's bed, too, up by the headboard with his legs criss-crossed in front of him, taking up as little space as possible. Not that he was inconspicuous at all, since everyone had collectively pressured him under a vertiable cocoon of lumpy blankets, after they had all woken up from the night before and one by one went to Gerard's room like it held a homing beacon.

 

Bright sunlight poured across Mikey's blanketed shoulders and knees, but he still looked cold. And tired. He looked like a young man who was worn out beyond belief, and Gerard felt like utter, utter shit that he hadn't noticed at all until now.

 

“So that shit happened to you every full moon?” Bob asked.

 

“Well, yeah, but not just then. It’s like.” Mikey scratched at his nose. “It’s like, I think it’s, y’know, when you feel something really strongly. Really strongly.”

 

"Why didn't you tell us, man," Frank said gently. He reached out to sort of pat the blanket over which Mikey's foot might be. "Were-transformation's a big deal, we were fucking worried. We would've understood--"

 

"It's not just that," Mikey cut Frank off, and then swallowed. He reached up to fix his glasses.

 

Frank pulled back his own hand. "No?"

 

"No," Gerard said, quieter than he'd meant to. He looked away from the others' stares-- betrayed, resigned, unsurprised-- and towards his brother.

 

Mikey swallowed again and took a couple deep breaths. That was okay. He could have as long as he needed.

 

"I've been drinking," he said. "And taking pills again. Too many."

 

The others pulled back, muttering to themselves. "Shit," Ray said, while Frank added, "Since when?"

 

"Since we fucking got here. Before that." Mikey was rubbing his eyes under his glasses.

 

Gerard blinked away his own tears. "That's going to fucking kill you, Mikey," he said, thickly.

 

"I know," Mikey mumbled.

 

"Yeah, you know like I knew two years--"

 

"It's not all about you!" Mikey snapped, slamming his hand down on the bed beside him.

 

Gerard flinched backwards from the words, surprised and hurt, deep in his chest.

 

Mikey shrunk down immediately, hunching his shoulders, and covering his eyes. "I didn't mean that. I'm sorry," he said. A few tears leaked out of his fingers and slid down the end of his nose.

 

"No, you did," Ray spoke up. Gerard looked over to find him staring back steadily. "And that's okay. Gerard, you didn't tell anyone?"

 

"What? No, I..." Gerard paused, at a loss. No, he hadn't told anyone, because of how badly he'd wanted the drinks. Because the album had been going so well, and surely they could all just push and pull through, battle whatever demons they found here and come out the other side together.

 

Jesus. What kind of fucking head-in-the-clouds bullshit. Mikey needed help, and he could've _died_. Gerard buried his face in his hand.

 

 

 

"We need to call Brian," Frank said after a couple minutes of silence. Gerard took a chance and put his hands down. Frank's face had smoothed out from upset and betrayed, changing into the angry-determined-loyal expression that he'd worn so much in Warped '04, and before then, when he was a shitty Jersey punk who smoked up too much and showed My Chem that he was going to be their second guitar or die trying. He looked from Gerard, to Ray, to Bob and finally at Mikey. He wriggled backwards on the sheet in an extremely undignified way until he could reach Mikey's knees without stretching. "Dude. You need help."

 

"I need help," Mikey admitted, quietly. He pressed his fingers to his eyes like he was trying to physically hold his eyeballs in. "I, fucking. I need to get out of here."

 

That hurt even more; that it was this place that was doing this to him, at least in part. Gerard swallowed again and looked away, willing himself not to start crying too.

 

Still, some small, hopeful part in Gerard's heart was glad to hear Mikey admit it.

 

"I'll call him," Bob offered, keeping his voice low to match the tone in the room. "He can send a car up, or something. Maybe even this afternoon." He paused, then looked between everyone, then back at Mikey. He got up from the winged chair to put his hand on Mikey's shoulder. "Hey, does that sound like a plan Mikey Way?"

 

Mikey, of all things, laughed into his hands. "Yeah."

 

"Alright," Bob said, easily. "I'll be back up soon." He left the room, with a nod at Gerard, a squeeze on the arm from Frank, and a shoulder clap from Ray.

 

 

 

Gerard wondered if them all being so determinedly close to one another was, like, a pack thing now. (Or a colony? He thought that when domestic cats became feral they formed colonies.)

 

But then, he guessed his band had always been incessantly about a lack of personal space, even when they were off the kind of tours where accepting that someone was always around you was required to survive with your head on straight. It was only since they'd started recording this fucking album that they'd all stopped hanging out together. Stopped talking, stopped being comfortable in the same room.

 

Gerard winced around the lump in his throat, staring at his socks instead of looking around.

 

After about ten seconds he felt a nudge on his feet. He looked up.

 

Frank was nudging him, his eyes flickering from Gerard to Mikey and then back again.

 

Gerard turned to Mikey, uncertain. Mikey’s staring at the ground and doesn’t seem like he’s going to be looking up very soon, if at all, as if he’s sinking into a pit inside of his head. And maybe Gerard is projecting at this point, but it’s terrifying. It’s terrifying.

 

He reached out towards his brother and Mikey turned to him at the same time, pressing his forehead into Gerard’s shoulder. Gerard exhaled, shaking, and hugged him back.

 

 

 

The relief was so strong that if Gerard had been on his feet it would've been enough to physically knock him over. For a second it washed over the sorrow, confusion, anger, self-loathing, all of it. Gerard felt--

 

there was blackness all around him--

 

 

 

and he was on something soft in a place that smelled strongly of human, particularly one of his favourite humans, who was right in front of him. They let out something that might've been a laugh.

 

Two of his other favourite humans were behind him; he turned around and sniffed the air when he heard their voices. "Aw, shit," one of them said, with another almost-laugh sound.

"Okay, that might get to be a problem," one of his other favourite humans said at the same time, and they were laughing too, but it was the wrong kind of laugh; it sounded wet.

 

It didn't mean anything to him but it didn't sound like distress, so he turned back to his first favourite human, who had the rank smell of fear and despair all over them. It was awful. He intended to remove it as fast as he possibly could, so he climbed onto his favourite human's chest and began digging, gently so as not to alarm them, and rubbing his head and sides against the underside of his human's chin.

 

His human made the laugh-sound again and then was scratching him under his ear.

 

That was excellent. He rumbled happily and continued his work.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

The next day Mikey was gone, packed off into the car with a sombre-faced Brian and all of his stuff. Ray and Gerard had collected it from the blue room, which had never really been Mikey's room. Gerard had took a deep breath and even picked up the bottle of rye from where it'd rolled under the bed.

 

If part of him wanted not to mention it, to leave it there in case of long nights where he couldn't sleep; if he looked at it for too long before he let it roll off his palm into the "bag of bullshit", as Frank had termed the plastic bag full of unneeded pharmaceuticals that Mikey had hidden in his luggage; well. Ray didn't say anything so Gerard wasn't going to, either.

 

Mikey was going to stay with Stacy, their lawyer and good friend. She lived in LA and had offered to let him live at her house while he was recovering. Brian and Gerard conferred with each other about the kinds of doctors Mikey would probably need and how many times he should see them a week, and Mikey had nodded along. When they asked him if there was something he'd want different or something they could do to help more, he'd shook his head. "Can't do it until I do it," he'd said.

 

Gerard had watched everyone else hug Mikey goodbye and then moved in himself, not squeezing too hard because he knew for a goddamn fact that if he did it'd just get ugly. Then he'd pulled back, and Mikey had gotten into Brian's car and driven down the long driveway away from him.

 

 

 

That night Gerard dreamed about fire, but he was above it this time. He stood in the sky watching a burning city under ash clouds, the bright moon washing the scene into monochrome, everything in slow-motion. He could see five figures down there through the smoke. They weren’t burning. They were playing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"You're a really fucking fluffy cat," Frank said conversationally at breakfast the next morning.

 

All of them had assembled in the kitchen again, and pulled three space-heaters from around the house so they'd all be warm. It was the first time a long while that all of them had been in the kitchen at the same time, much less drinking warm beverages together. (Gerard had let Bob make the coffee. He'd mixed it up with hot chocolate mix so everyone's drinks came out half and half. Bob had been taking coffee wizard lessons from Mikey, apparently.)

 

"Are you saying I'm fat," Gerard said, aiming for a joke and ending up somewhere between it and despondent. They'd moved all unneeded chairs but there was an empty space between Frank and Ray, and it hurt Gerard like a broken rib.

 

"I'm saying you look like you should be in a super-villain's lair in bad comic movie," Frank told him. He put down his coffee and pulled the ever-present notebook from the corner of the table towards him. He flipped open to a fresh page, pulled it out of the binding, grabbed a pen and within seconds had sketched out a cat who did indeed look like it belonged in a superhero film. Smooth white fur that stuck out half again as wide as the cat's head, to say nothing of the tail.

 

"Okay, that's an exaggeration," Gerard had said as Frank started drawing elaborate bows in the cats' tail, and he laughed a little, like coughing. Immediately after he felt terrible, but Frank was smiling. That'd been his scheme all along.

 

"It's alright, man," Frank said comfortingly, and then pointed to Bob instead. "At least you're not like this guy, fucking bright orange with ears as big as his face."

 

Bob just rolled his eyes and kept drinking his coffee. There was a muffled thud as he probably kicked Frank under the table.

 

"Ow. Violence is not the answer, Bob."

 

"What about me?" Ray asked. Frank offered him the pen and paper. Ray obligingly started sketching. "I'm not the artist in here, keep in mind."

 

"It looks like a turtle," Frank said, peering at Ray's drawing upside-down with his eyes squinted like he was looking at a picture of a vase that was also a nose. "Or, maybe," he tilted his head, "Like a llama?"

 

"Stop." Gerard put his mug down. He had his hand pressed to his forehead again; his entire brain felt like it was swimming in fire. "Frank, I know you're trying to help, but please stop."

 

Frank looked at him, sank back down in his chair. "Sorry," he said.

 

Gerard closed his eyes and tried to take even breaths. He felt like he'd been hollowed out.

 

A few seconds later he put down his hand and looked around the table again. "Can I see that?" He asked, gesturing to the notebook.

 

Ray slid it over to him. He uncapped the pen where it'd been stuck to the front cover by the lid and started to draw. When he was done he turned it to face Frank, who looked up, subdued, and then laughed.

 

"Do you think those are my tattoos?" He asked, pointing at the stripes that the cat version of him wore on his fur.

 

"I don't know. Usually it doesn't work like that." Gerard had read many, many comic books in his life, some of which were about this sort of thing. But maybe fucking haunted were-creature mansion curses made allowances for tattoos. "Maybe, though."

 

"That'd be sweet," Frank said. "It'd make sense why you're so white, too. And Ray's brown. And Bob's a spawn of hell."

 

"I don't have to make you coffee again," Bob said.

 

Frank raised his eyebrows and took a particularly deep sip of his cup.

 

 

 

Gerard watched them, back and forth, and he looked at Ray, who wasn’t smiling but didn’t have the same wordless worry lines on his head that he’d had for the past month. He looked down into his mug and saw himself reflected, muddy and gross, warped by the movements in the drink.

 

It wasn’t right, them all here and Mikey gone.

 

But they were talking, and not arguing, and sharing things they’d made. That was more like themselves than they’d all been acting in such a long time.

 

Maybe, Gerard thought, maybe they could fix this.

 

 

 

-~-

 

**Author's Note:**

> /
> 
>  
> 
> Werecats! *jazzhands*  
> Originally I meant for this to be heavier than it is, but it just did not end that way. Hopefully it is still enjoyable!  
> (If you're wondering "Goose, did you _have to_ with that Pretty Odd reference," yes. Yes I did.)


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